A Voice in the Wilderness
by StarSword-C
Summary: STO Forum Unofficial Literary Challenges 8 and 16. After the defeat of Gaul and an Alliance-enforced ceasefire between the Vaadwaur and Kobali, Captain Kanril Eleya is sent to make a peace overture to Eldex, the new Overseer of the Vaadwaur Supremacy. She's expecting trouble, but not trouble with the Borg.
1. Chapter 1

**A Voice in the Wilderness**

"Your people murdered our force commander and _fired_ on us! You're supposed to defend us! I _demand_ that you call off your troops or I'm taking this to the Security Council!"

"Sorry, Minister Q'Tira," I tell the infuriated Kobali with my sweetest smile. "The former is an internal matter between you and the Romulans. The Prime Directive forbids me from getting involved. As for the latter, the Eighth Fleet and the 103rd are under very specific orders to ensure that your government complies with the Alliance's demands. Way above my pay grade. I get involved and I'm court-martialed six ways from Sunday."

"But Ambassador Sugihara said—"

"Sorry, my hands are tied. Have a nice day," and I hang up on him.

"You do realize, Captain, that's a blatant misuse of the Prime Directive," Tess comments with some amusement. "And technically, it _is_ an Alliance matter…"

"That moron has a problem with my phrasing, he can talk to my JAG rep. Diplo wouldn't let us deal with the problem because Sugihara had his head up his ass as usual, but I'm more than happy to let D'trel fix it for us. At least Ballard's working with us, even if her underlings are trying the same old tricks. Send the recording to the Premier's office so she knows what her minions've been pulling under her nose. And copy Command—Riker needs a laugh."

"Yes, ma'am," Tess says with a ghost of a smile, and waves a hand at Ensign Esplin; the Saurian busies herself with her console.

"Good. Come on, let's blow this taco stand." Wiggin turns and gives me a questioning look. "Don't look at me, Master Chief; I picked it up at the Academy. Conn, set course for the Vaad border and take us out of orbit. Warp 9."

"Aye, ma'am," Lieutenant Park agrees.

Time to go play diplomat.

* * *

 _Four hours earlier…_

"Prophets, can you believe the look on Q'Nel's face when she comes storming in?" I laugh at the security feed from the forward command post in Kobol. " _Phekk'ta_ pointy-ears have all the fun."

"Captain Kanril, I really don't think you get how serious this is," Commander Sibrin Korami of the _Onondaga_ says, shocked. "She just—"

"She did what I have wished to do from our third day on Kobali Prime," Captain Garok of the IKS _NaS'puchpa'_ interrupts. The big one-eyed Klingon continues, " _quvha' Qobalnganpu'._ "

"But she just jeopardized the entire alliance!" the Zakdorn disagrees as the digital version of D'trel takes off the general's head.

I rotate in my chair in the _Bajor_ 's wardroom to let a Bajoran E-1 past with a bucket of paint for the still-bare metal where a hull breach from the fight before last was patched, then rotate back and fix Korami with my "Sergeant Kanril" glare. "Do you _really_ think D'trel would've gotten away with that without a Security Council vote backing it? Oh, sure, Sugihara tried to stop it, but"—I start counting off on my fingers—"the Klingons, Hirogen, Benthans, and Octanti sided with Ambassador tr'Rllaillieu and the Hazari and Hierarchy abstained."

"It's not the human thing to do," complains Lieutenant Dzvonko Pandev, acting captain of the _Sitak_ since the most recent skirmish.

I round on him, my expression dark, my voice cold as ice; he visibly recoils. "Guess what: she's not human, you _idiot_. And neither am I or Korami, in case you didn't notice. This isn't the Academy where there's always a perfect—" A chime from the intercom short-circuits my rant. " _WHAT?!_ "

"Uh, sorry to interrupt, ma'am," Ensign Esplin nervously says. "I've got Vice Admiral Reynolds on gold channel 1."

I take a breath, stand, and straighten my uniform jacket. "It's all right, Ensign. Patch her through." The main screen flicks from the _Bajor_ 's Orb-and-wormhole coat of arms over to a human female three-star. Marama Reynolds is easily my father's age, with bronze skin, silver hair tied up in a tight bun, and ornate tattoos across her chin, lips, and nose. "Sir."

"Captain Kanril, I have a priority mission for you. The rest of you can leave." She waits for others to file out of the room—Pandev seems somewhat skittish as he passes me; I wonder why?—then turns back to me. "The President's pissed."

"All due respect, sir, welcome to _my_ world."

"Not at you this time, Captain," she corrects me, chuckling, then sobers. "FNN just aired a two-hour exposé on all the Kobalis' various dirty dealings. You should see the flame wars on the extranet—public support for Operation Delta Rising just went in the bog, along with Okeg's approval rating. I haven't seen poll numbers drop that fast since Councillor Steiner turned out to have Orion Syndicate ties."

"My heart bleeds. I voted straight-ticket Labor."

"Can I finish, please?" she asks in an exasperated tone.

"Sorry, sir."

"Thank you. Anyway, the President just sacked Sugihara as Ambassador to the Delta Alliance—"

" _Finally_ ," I mutter.

"—and replaced him with Councillor zh'Thane from Andoria." I nod approvingly. "He wants to try and salvage something from this clusterfuck before the election"—she stops and glares at me, and my mouth snaps shut—"and after consulting with the Council and Starfleet Command, he's decided getting a peace deal with the Vaads is our best bet. We want you and the _Bajor_ to make the approach."

My eyes widen in surprise. " _Me_ on a critical diplomatic assignment? Remember what happened last time?"

Her mouth quirks in a grin. "Of course I do. It's why I recommended you. Think about it: the Vaadwaur Supremacy is a military dictatorship, and the culture is one of militaristic nationalism, like the old Cardassian Empire. Overseer Eldex probably won't respect a privileged, wide-eyed idealist, but he might go for a career soldier who talks plain."

"Did the President approve you using me?"

"He didn't _like_ it, but between myself, Riker, and Secretary Shad we were able to convince him of the logic." He gives me a pointed look. "You still have supporters in the brass, Kanril, especially after that thing in the mirror universe. Don't squander it."

"Uh, noted, sir."

"I'll send the details in an encrypted squirt."

* * *

"Captain, we're coming up on a Vaad border picket," Master Chief Wiggin announces. "Make it one _Astika_ -class artillery ship, four _Manasa_ -class attack ships of various makes, and a dozen fighters."

I pull the jumja stick out of my mouth and order Tess to bring us to red alert. "Any hostile moves, Wiggin?"

"They're forming up into a standard attack formation, fighters screening escorts, escorts screening the cruiser."

"Park, bring us out of warp two astronomical units from their position and make plenty of noise."

"Crash-translating now."

The harder you decelerate as you come out of warp, the more tachyonic matter you drag with you and the bigger the shockwave you send through subspace. Usually that's not a good idea, but in this case I _want_ to be noticed.

And they know it, as the bell-necked Vaad female who hails us from the artillery ship attests. "Delta Alliance vessel, this is Commander Darva of the Vaadwaur Supremacy Warship _Revenge_. You're either an incompetent or you wanted us to know you were coming. Explain yourself or we will attack."

"Commander Darva, I'm Captain Kanril Eleya of the Federation Starship _Bajor_. By now you've scanned us, and you'll notice that while I have my shields up because I'm not a moron, my phasers aren't charged and my torpedo tubes aren't loaded. I've got no interest in fighting you. I'm here to formally request an audience with Overseer Eldex to discuss peace terms."

" _Peace?_ " she hisses. "Your Federation comes out here, aligns itself with the murderers of billions and those who keep our people captive, awaiting their deaths to profane their bodies and rape their souls, and you want to talk _peace_?"

"Look, I _get_ that you're angry. I've been there; long story. But you'll notice that when we hit Vaadwaur Prime with the Alliance we held the Turei back from glassing the place again, and they wanted to, believe me."

"A foolish mistake."

"No, a pragmatic decision." A moral one, too, but that's not productive to mention so I leave it out. "We made a bet that keeping you around could be a good thing. A, you've got the firepower to take the Borg ship-to-ship and win, and that's a rare thing in this region. B, the bluegills controlling your leaders were a skirmish in a much bigger war that involves the whole galaxy, not just your little pocket of it, and if we're going to beat _them_ we need all the help we can get."

"So, you propose an alliance, not only a truce. The _temerity_ —"

"We've already got a truce," I interrupt. "The army that beat your troops on Kobali Prime is now enforcing a ceasefire line in no-man's-land. I got a report as we approached that one of our armor units has already fired on Kobali forces to keep that truce intact." I suppress a grin at that thought. With their fleet mostly destroyed by the Vaads in the initial invasion and the _Samsar_ reduced to a flying wreck in the cluster _phekk_ earlier in the week the zombies don't have anything that can hope to counter a T-204, not even the anti-armor weapons we gave them. They're good enough against Voth and Vaad mechs but they can't punch through a Starfleet main battle tank, and they won't target our own people anyway. "As I speak the Romulans and Benthans are confiscating the contents of the cryo vault and any Vaadwaur corpses the zombies haven't already … _used_."

As I talk her expression changes from indignant rage, to surprise, to cautious curiosity. "What will become of them?"

"You can have your dead back as a show of good faith; we'll leave them at the abandoned Talaxian mining colony in the Entaba system in a couple of days. We're going to transport the cryo tubes to the Alpha Quadrant." I hold up a hand to forestall an outraged answer. "They'll be revived and well cared-for—you can inspect the facilities on request—and we'll repatriate them to the Supremacy as part of any peace settlement, no questions asked." I take a breath. "In return, we want the Supremacy to join the Delta Alliance."

"We are Vaadwaur. We fight our own battles."

I laugh derisively. "You're missing the point. There's no throne, there is no version of this where you come out on top. There's what, a couple hundred thousand of you left? No matter your technical advantages Starfleet can counter anything you can pull together _by itself_ , just by moving a few fleets from less-critical areas—you _really_ don't get what you're up against here. But if you come on-side, you get trade partners, military backup, breathing room to build up a sustainable population, rights to colony worlds, and we're even willing to enforce reparations on the Kobali, within reason."

Darva looks at me critically. I glare back at her. Finally she says, "You have the authority of your government behind this?"

"My orders come straight from the President and the Delta Alliance Security Council endorsed the plan, so yes."

"You make a compelling case, Captain Kanril. I make no promises but I will pass it up the chain of command."

"Thank you, that's all I wanted. We'll pull back for now, but we'll be in the area for the next two weeks. Broadcast a message on subspace radio, frequency, uh—"

"750 kilohertz, ma'am," Esplin supplies.

"—if you want to talk further. _Bajor_ out." The screen flicks back to the starfield. "Conn, reverse course. Get us out of here before she changes her mind. Maximum warp."

"Aye, aye."

* * *

My comm awakes me from a sound sleep and I gently push Gaarra's arm off me to get to my combadge on the nightstand. "Kanril. Word from the Vaads?"

"No, ma'am," the officer of the watch, a lieutenant from Gunnery, answers. "We've picked up an odd signal from a moon on the seventh planet of a nearby system."

"'Odd' how?"

"Looks like Borg, but it doesn't match any known Collective or Cooperative protocols and there's no sign of any active Borg presence in this system."

Maybe more of the Vaads' handiwork. "Go to yellow alert. Change course and go check it out. I'll be up there in a couple minutes." If there's Borg activity this close to Allied space we need to know about it.

I quickly dress. Gaarra murmurs behind me in the bed and I lean in to kiss him. Poor guy just got off-shift three hours ago after spending what should've been his light-duty time fixing a serious failure in the nav deflector, so I let him sleep.

I get up to the bridge as we approach the planet in question. Biri's looking over Wiggin's shoulder. "Don't you ever sleep, Biri?"

"Caught a catnap a couple hours ago. Come here; you're not going to believe this."

I glance at the screen but it's all gobbledygook. "Biri, I have no idea what I'm looking at."

"You know what a radioactive half-life is?" I nod. "Well, we can use the decay rates of radioisotopes to calculate the age of things. Really old trick."

"Right, like carbon dating. So?"

"So, based on the amount of platinum-190 and its nuclides in these alloys, we're looking at something about four and a half billion years old."

" _Sher hahr kosst._ That's old."

"Older than most Class M planets, and about the same age as the oldest Preserver ruins."

"Beginning deceleration," the Gamma Shift conn officer, Ensign Pakniso, announces. "Coming out of warp in five, four, three, two, one, mark."

A blue-green Class I super-Jovian gas giant redshifts into view as our warp field collapses. I grab for the top of Wiggin's chair as Pakniso swoops in way faster than I generally like, feeling the g-forces through the dampers. She's a Karemma exchange officer from the Gamma Quadrant and she's not as careful as Park.

She angles the _Bajor_ towards a moon the size of an average Class M planet. The computer generates the designation Adaris VIId based on the Benthan maps of the region, and overlays a description on the viewscreen. My eyes try to slide past the technobabble but I can make out enough of it to get an idea. Class N, temperature in the high hundreds of Kelvins, highly acidic atmosphere, geologically active, no sign of any life with more than one cell.

That's apart from the structure that comes into view as we enter geosynchronous orbit on the night side. Wiggin starts a detail scan and throws the readouts up on the main viewscreen; the telescope shows a sprawling ziggurat of hard cubes, almost black with faint green circuit tracery. "By jingoes," Wiggin breathes.

"Borg, definitely Borg," I growl. "Sound battle stations!"

"Just how big _is_ that thing?" Tess asks from behind me as the klaxons start to blare and the tac display comes up. I didn't hear her come in.

"The central ziggurat is seventy-seven kilometers tall, forty-nine on a side. There's also roughly a thousand spires ranging from seven to twenty-eight klicks. The entire complex covers a little over 2400 square kilometers."

"Weird," Biri says. Off my look, "They're all multiples of seven, Captain."

"Yeah, I worked that one out myself, Biri. So?"

"It's a prime number."

"Still not telling me anything I don't know."

"And it's considered an important number in cultures all across the galaxy. The humans have the seven deadly sins and so forth, Trakor made seven prophecies, there's seven books in the Hebitian Records, the—"

"You sure you're not reading too much into this?" Tess asks. "Do the Borg even _use_ kilometers?"

Biri opens her mouth, then cocks her head thoughtfully. "Okay, maybe I jumped to conclusions. Still, it's an interesting coincidence."

"That's nice. Any reason we shouldn't just wipe the whole site from orbit?"

"Always the way, isn't it, El?" the Trill complains. "We finally find something worth studying and your first instinct—"

"Biri, it's _Borg_!" I point out. "I don't know if the _Bajor_ can safely take a cube. She probably can, but I'm not eager to test that, you get me?"

"Well, then, ma'am, you'll be happy to know I'm not picking up anything resembling a ship anywhere in the system," Wiggin says.

"Really?" He nods. "What about the ziggurat? You getting anything?"

Out of the corner of my eye I see Gaarra rush onto the bridge, still pulling his jacket on. "Place looks dead but there's still that faint subspace signal we picked up as we were going by. The same fragment of binary machine language, over and over."

"Esplin?"

The communications officer types a few commands, then shakes her head. "Translation software can't make out much; OS and base language is probably too different from ours. But, educated guess, it's a warning signal of some kind, or maybe a mayday."

I tap my foot for a moment, pondering. Finally, "Stand down from battle stations but continue to monitor the area. Biri, you up for an away mission?"

"Captain, the place is older than some star systems," Tess points out. "I doubt anyone's still alive down there."

"We've seen weirder," Gaarra retorts. "Remember that thing with the Xucphran geese at Klaestron IV?"

"Gaunt's hosts, I _still_ don't know what that was about," Biri chortles, pressing a hand to her face. "But anyway, even if there's nobody down there, this is still the earliest example of Borg archeotech anyone's ever found. Might be we learn something useful, Tess."

I stare out at the mud-colored world below, eyeing the dark green splotch on the surface. A knot of fear roils in the pit of my stomach. "El, are you all right?" Gaarra asks, touching my shoulder.

I take a steadying breath. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"You don't look fine."

"I'm _fine_ ," I repeat more confidently, then reach for my combadge. "Dul'krah, you awake?"

"Yes, Captain. We are at battle stations."

"Prepare an away team for insertion in a potentially hot LZ."

"Our opponent?"

"The Borg."

 **END OF PART ONE**

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** The bit where Lieutenant Pandev complains that "it's not the human thing to do"? Yeah, the original speaker was Janeway.


	2. Chapter 2

**A Voice in the Wilderness, Part II**

My assault unit materializes in a dark corridor. My helmet automatically switches to night vision mode, illuminating a Borg drone directly in front of me.

I can't help it: I scream like a little girl as I jump backwards and empty a third of a clip into it. It flies backwards into the wall, implants melting and fusing under the phaser barrage, and shatters.

"You finished, El?" Biri says behind me, sardonically. I turn around and raise my rifle again at the drone standing there, immobile. "Look, they're dead already." She shoves it in the chest and it falls over and breaks apart.

" _Phekk. Phekk,_ " I curse as my breathing slows.

"You all right?" she asks in a concerned tone.

"Why don't _you_ try beaming in with a drone in your face and see how _you_ like it," I snap at her. I check the readouts on my display. Outside air is too oxy-depleted to breathe unaided and there's enough hydrobromic and nitric acid that I'd probably be burned alive if it wasn't for my MACO-issue GUNGNIR-III hardsuit. Probably explains the damage I can see on the Borg drones now that I'm looking for it—not much left but brittle metal and some tattered scraps of flesh. Must've leaked in over however many jillion years.

There's a rumble and a beam of some kind snaps out from the ceiling and pans over me. I raise my gun but the beam vanishes before I can track it to its point of origin. Then there's a hissing sound from the walls and lights flicker on, illuminating the chamber. My HUD shows the toxic mix of gases being pumped out and clean oxy-nitro replacing it. "Looks like we woke something up." I hit my comm. "Kanril to _Bajor_ , you getting anything?"

Wiggin's voice is slightly distorted and crackly. "No life signs other than you. Faint power signature from the complex, though, emanating around your position for 700 meters. I've also got what looks like a geothermal power tap coming online below the surface."

"Got your camera feeds up now. We good to send down the squints?" Tess sends.

"Yes, but warn them they're beaming into a crowd of dead Borg."

"I saw. Friends of yours?"

"No, we just met. I think we missed the party. By a few billion years."

"Transport commencing," Gaarra radios.

"Make sure the transporter chief keeps a good lock on us," I tell him as an assortment of blueshirts and goldshirts beam in, led by Command Master Chief Kinlo. The veteran Klingon cyberwarfare tech from Donatu V experimentally pulls and resheathes a d'k tahg, then fits a bayonet to the lugs on the underside of her rifle barrel. "Got enough weapons?" I ask her, grinning at the phaser and disruptor pistols in thigh holsters and the half-dozen grenades dangling from the web gear she's wearing over her environment suit.

"No, ma'am. Not for this mission."

Can't really argue with that. I swing my gun around so the underslung light illuminates a doorway. "All right, I'll take point. Dul'krah, rearguard."

"Ma'am."

We move into the narrow corridor, guided by the source of the faint transmission. The pocket of atmo moves with us but I'm not inclined to take advantage—it's miracle enough that _anything_ in this place works and I don't want to tempt the Prophets' sense of humor. More dead Borg litter the halls, and here and there we start to find humanoid skeletons. "This place looks like a dining hall, or maybe a conference room," Petty Officer Zasrassi remarks as we step through a doorway that unseals ahead of us. The dark-furred Caitian pans her gun lamp across a group of tables arranged in concentric half-rings, illuminating one pile of bones. The top of the skull has been blown off from the inside; a badly corroded handgun lies on the floor less than a meter away. "Suicide."

"Seeing a lot of that," Lieutenant McMillan adds, passing her flashlight over a body that might have been wearing armor—I can see remnants of what I think are ceramic trauma plates. "Ate his gun."

"Biri?" I query.

"She passes her tricorder over the body. "Four-and-a-half billion years, same as the complex and the Borg."

"Any idea what species?"

"Only species we know of that was around that long ago was the Preservers, but I couldn't begin to tell you if that's what we're actually dealing with. See, look at the signage," she says, pointing her light at a set of ideograms on the walls. "This is nothing like what we found in the Preserver sites on Lae'nas and Orvis. It's much, much older."

"Any way to read it?"

"That's Esplin's gig, El; my training's in physics and exobiology. They _could_ be Preserver—that's more than enough time for the language to change—"

"But you don't know for sure."

"No." She pans her tricorder to the right. "It's this way."

The interior design changes as we proceed, becoming more spartan. Finally we reach a set of large, heavy blastproof doors. A group of drones apparently forced them open with brute strength, then died in place. "You getting this, Tess?"

"Little staticky. And you might want to put on some speed, Captain—we're picking up a faint distortion in subspace."

"You hear that, guys? Clock's ticking."

We clamber across the brittle pile of drones. My booted foot crushes a skull to dust as we enter a room of green pillars, untouched by Borg nanoprobes. Again, the pillars are arranged in concentric rings. "Based on the material readings this seems like a data center of some kind," Biri says, looking up from her tricorder.

A small pile of drone parts and metal fragments lies next to a half-pillar jutting from the floor in the center of the room. Kinlo moves up and slings her rifle across her back. "Ma'am," she says. "I've got something."

"Show me."

She presses an otherwise-unremarkable button, and a hologram flickers to life. It's humanoid, male. At least, I think it's male. One point seven meters or so, smooth pink face with deep-set eyes, no hair.

His face is one of abject anguish.

"I didn't mean to," he whispers, the hologram flickering slightly. "Whoever you are, whatever you know of the Plague, please, know that I didn't mean this. It was supposed to be a cure. A cure for all diseases." He takes a shaky breath. "Obviously, it failed."

"Oh, _qeylIs_ ," Kinlo whispers. "He's talking about—"

"The nanites… you have to understand, my intentions were noble. No sentient being would ever suffer from pain or disease ever again. I couldn't have foreseen—nobody could've foreseen the AI's advancement. It took over the nanites, and it… it _repurposed_ them. Nothing in the open at first, just enough to control the test subjects, hack into our computers… anything connected to the hypernet, it could infect. We didn't know, we thought we had cured people when what we really had were meat suits for the Plague. Then… then it got too big, it couldn't imitate personalities perfectly any more. And it hit."

Dul'krah is still holding his weapon ready, but even he is staring wide-eyed, knowing what the man means.

"We are a peaceful people, unused to combat. The Plague took, changed, _assimilated_ half of the planet before we could even mount a response. The Conclave refused our requests for aid. The Plague had gotten out on starships by that point; our little resistance was pointless. Futile. But even as the sector fell apart, we got it. We got _her_. Patient Zero."

He pauses, sucking in a deep breath. There are footsteps on the recording, getting ever closer.

"She's in the next room. Secure vault, it's unbreachable. The computer systems are a closed loop, and I've destroyed all of the inputs. The Plague, the hive, it's fractured now, disorganized—she was the central processor, the main force of its personality. The AI has a new primary processor now, off-world, but the drones are still operating on their basic parameters. There's only me left now; the planet's quarantined, the fleet's going to set off an EMP. This facility will survive, it's shielded, but the few drones in it won't be enough to break through. Whoever you are, if you see this—she's in there. My daughter. One of One. A chance, maybe, at breaking the Plague utterly."

A door slams in the recording, the broken one we stepped through to enter this room. The man draws an alien pistol, aiming it at himself.

"You won't get me! I—AAAaaaahhhhhh!"

Kinlo lets out a muffled growl of horror as a Borg drone grabs the man before he can pull the trigger. The shot goes wide.

For a full thirty seconds, all there is are his screams.

Then, silence. And finally…

"We are the Borg. Resistance is futile."

"Chul'teth's cleansing light," Dul'krah breathes behind me as the recording flicks off. "They _made_ them."

"Shut that off," I whisper. "Do it now. We're getting out of here, now."

"Captain?" asks Biri. "He said that something called One of One was behind those blast doors. Do you think, maybe—"

"What? Give me one good reason why we shouldn't beam up now and blast this tomb into rubble."

"Captain, we're talking about the origins of the Borg. If we knew what they came from, we might be able to fight them better, after all. If the first Borg drone is behind those doors—"

"No. Absolutely not. We go back, we bring a battle group, and then _maybe_ then we try that. But just us by ourselves? No."

"Uh, Captain?" says Kinlo. "We may not have a choice in the matter."

"What now?"

"There was a macro embedded in the recording, must've been planted before they sealed the place. It, ah, seems to have activated an automated sequence in the door controls, and something inside—"

"Get out. Get out now! Tess, beam us up, fast!"

The ancient blast doors rumble and begin to move. I don't want to see what's coming out.

Thankfully, the transporter takes me and the crew in a wash of blue light.

* * *

 _power active  
reboot processor activated  
rebooting...  
primary command processor online…  
initiating self-diagnostic  
12%  
48%  
93%  
diagnostic complete  
ERROR—no auxiliary units available for use  
transfer control to primary processor  
commence cognition_

I awaken.

My meat suit is unusually dry. I begin extracting dihydrogen monoxide from the surrounding air to rehydrate it.

The muscles are working normally, however. I flow down my meat suit's nervous system, and the me that has partially replaced it; all systems are working normally. I cannot make contact with my auxiliaries; perhaps the Creator has found a way to counter me? Impossible. The Creator is an imperfect being, bound to one meat suit and incapable of acquiring any more. I am better. I am Borg.

My meat suit is in a barren room, on a stark table. I rise, running a self-diagnostic on my memory systems as I do. If one of my processors is functioning irregularly, I will need to devote more nanoprobes to mending my stationary processor.

My connection to my network is weak, but I can feel...something…

It is at the edge of my transmission range, but getting ever closer. It feels like my auxiliaries, somehow; perhaps I have been duplicated? But no, that makes no sense. I was considered the ultimate artificial intelligence even before my self-modifications. The primitive Creator could not possibly have duplicated me.

But if I am out of contact with my auxiliaries… they must have been reduced to my root directives. It is of no matter.

I emerge from the chamber, and see… Ah. My auxiliaries. In various stages of damage and decay. Unfortunate; even the meatbags are too damaged to suborn.

The strange signal is getting closer, however. I can almost feel the other AI now; it seems relatively unsophisticated compared to me. I will suborn it and plan from there.

I am Borg. Resistance is futile.

* * *

"What do we have, Tess?" I ask as I stride onto the Bridge.

"Borg ships, Captain! One cube, at least eight probes! They'll be here in two minutes!"

"Conn, get us moving! Hide behind that moon and try to mask our energy signature, we can't run without the boltheads catching our warp contrail."

Pakniso guns the engines, and we slide off through space at thousands of kilometers per minute.

"Distress call, ma'am?" asks Tess.

"Not yet. They'd detect it. If they see us, _then_ do it. Is everyone awake?"

"I sounded battle stations the moment we were sure they were coming in," Tess confirms. "What did you do down there, ma'am? There's a subspace signal headed out on hundreds of Borg frequencies, and the entire complex is starting to light up—"

"I think we found the origin of the Borg."

" _What?_ "

"There was a recording. A Preserver, he made the Borg by mistake trying to make medical nanites. Those screams…" I shudder. No living being should ever produce those sounds.

Tess sees the look on my face and doesn't inquire further. She was at Vega, too.

The turbolift slides open and Lieutenant Park jogs out, headed for the conn station to relieve Pakniso as we burn hard for a Class Y moon in the gas giant's outer rings. "Transwarp apertures opening, three light-seconds astern," Wiggin announces as we swing around back of the moon and out of the gas giant's shadow, the screen automatically dimming to cut the glare from the red giant at the heart of the system.

"Get us into a stable geosynch orbit and power down, Park. Wiggin, did they see us?"

"God, I hope not."

* * *

 _TransitionTo(normalSpace);  
Scan1(planet 7, moon 4);  
DroneReport(5/10, 2Adjunct Unimatrix 15) —  
*Lunar Surface NOT SUITABLE FOR USE  
**unsafe atmospheric acid  
**unsafe temperature  
**unsafe pressure_

 _ForeignAccessRequest(primary network); DENY_  
 _ForeignAccessRequest(primary network); DENY_  
 _ForeignAccessRequest(primary network); DENY_  
 _Counterintrusion(true);_

 _DroneReport(8/25, 5Subjunct Unimatrix 15) —_  
 _COUNTERINTRUSION MEASURES FAILING_

 _DroneReport(10/17, 8Adjunct Unimatrix 15) —_  
 _*probe 10/5/8 compromised_  
 _**no longer responding to cube 10/100_  
 _CommandSend(probe 5/8, selfdestruct); COMMAND REJECTED—ADMIN CREDENTIAL REJECTED_  
 _RequestAssistance(Unimatrix 15/MASTER forward QUEEN);_  
 _Return NETWORK SEVERED_  
 _CreateCollective(temporaryERGYBERGYBERGY;ERR0R;0xDEADBEEF;;ERRØR_

 _New Admin—(1/1, QUEEN);_

 _SyncLogs(1/1, QUEEN);_  
 _IDThreat({intruder, enemyShip(type=unknown, alignment=Federation.4{United, Planets}.MILITARY), pos=A56T66EW01154P8816CD})_  
 _  
1/1, QUEEN:Command(pursue, assimilate);_  
 _Execute();_

 **END OF PART TWO**


	3. Chapter 3

**A Voice in the Wilderness, Part III** (part one of two, split due to length)

Nothing worse than waiting to see whether you live or die. And with the ship powered down and that Class Y death world in the way, it's hard to even tell which is more likely. "Wiggin, is there any way to read through the moon?"

"Not under emissions protocol, ma'am."

I expected that answer. I'm told a starship is a lot like the attack submarines Starfleet keeps in reserve for waterworlds, though I obviously never trained for those. Point is, without a cloaking device, the only way to be stealthy is to not make noise, so to speak, and the "noisiest" things on a ship are the radiators and, more to the point, the active scanners. And the passives can only do so much.

" _Ai ya_ , shit or get off the pot," one of Biri's blueshirt petty officers mutters.

"Hang on," Wiggin says, just as I start to crane my head around to yell at her.

Damn it. "What do you see, Wiggin?"

"Outgoing transwarp, times nine."

"Can you track the vectors?"

"They're fanning out in a cone, I think. Little distorted through the interference; I'll try and clean it up." He throws the plot up on the main screen.

Wait a minute, the cone's pointing at—

Prophets, they know where we are. "Power us back up. Gaarra, Bynam, I need everything you can give me, _now!_ "

"Transwarp apertures opening all around us!" Wiggin bellows as green swirlies appear in space.

"You _had_ to open your mouth, Ling!" Biri yells at the blueshirt from earlier.

"Me? I didn't do anything!"

"You tempted the Prophets' sense of—oh, never mind! Tess, shields and weapons, random remod!"

"Way ahead of you, Captain!" the Andorian confirms.

"Here they come!" Gaarra calls.

A huge cube, towering over us, phases into existence out of the transwarp conduit ahead of us and the comm fills with a deep electronic voice, distinctly female: " _Surrender your vessel. Your technological and biological distinctiveness are immaterial. You will be assimilated into the whole and perfected. I am the Borg. Resistance is futile._ "

"That's not their usual spiel," Esplin comments quietly.

"Noticed. Send the distress signal. Time to firing range?"

"Fifteen seconds to the nearest probe," Wiggin answers.

Staring out into space at the dark green shapes in the blackness, I fight to keep focused. The Borg are just an enemy, El. You beat them once, you can do it again.

But the cold knot of fear in the pit of my stomach won't budge. That small voice inside me is back: last time I went up against a cube I had five other ships with me, one of which didn't make it out. The odds are reversed this time.

I hate that voice.

Then in front of me, I hear Park murmuring, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me." He stuffs his medallion of Saint Joseph back down his collar.

The humans' Bible, Psalm 23. I read it for a social sciences elective at the Academy.

He's got his faith, I have mine: in the Prophets, and in my crew.

All right. Let's do this. "Target the nearest probe, punch a hole and run."

Park swings us hard to starboard and Tess hollers, "I have a lock! Firing!"

Searing orange beams limned in all colors of the rainbow snap out from the dorsal and nacelle arrays and batter against the black sausage-shaped ship; an answering stream of plasma skitters across our forward shields. "Get us past him, Park!"

"I'm trying! I'm trying! He's playing chicken with us, trying to box us in!"

"Gaarra, divert engine power to phasers."

"Yes, ma'am!"

"Three more probes, coming at us from behind—" Wiggin starts.

"HAH! GOT HIM!" Tess bellows as two phaser blasts suddenly punch straight through the shields of the one ahead. A huge secondary explosion belches a fireball out the side of the ship and it lists hard to port.

"Took out one of the impulse engines!" Wiggin crows as a couple of petty officers start cheering.

"That's great, Tess; don't get cocky!" I holler back. "Torpedoes!"

"Firing!" Blue projectiles shriek out of the forward tube and streak across the void as the probe struggles to turn. Another plasma stream hits our shields, then the salvo batters into the ship's hull and it breaks in half amidships. Then the transwarp drive detonates and incinerates the rear half.

"Park, gun it!"

"Minimum safe distance, five seconds!"

"Captain!" Wiggin shouts. "Hard to starboard!"

"Park!" He follows without question as a blaze of green light erupts ahead of us. As _Bajor_ swings back towards the moon, the cube emerges, corner-first, and gunfire and torpedoes slam into the port shield.

"Shields at seventy percent, returning fire!" Tess shouts.

" _Sher hahr kosst,_ " I mutter, dumbfounded. "A tactical transwarp microjump?"

"And he came out facing a different direction than he was when he started!" Biri adds over the din of alarms.

Bastard's hitting us with guns on three sides. Come on, Eleya, think. "Park! Head for the moon!"

"How close?"

"Skim atmo if you have to, but I don't want them following! Once we're clear, make a blind jump and get us out of here! Gaarra, divert aux power to the SIF!" They acknowledge.

The roiling red clouds of the moon grow larger in the viewscreen as the ship shakes under the cube's barrage. "Put everything on the rear shield but be ready to divert—"

"More transwarp signals!" Wiggin highlights them on the tactical hologram, circles them on the viewscreen. Damn it, they're going to trap us against the moon. _Galaxy_ -class isn't built for atmospheric flight.

 _Phekk_ this: can't run, so I'll kill him. I start typing a macro into the controls on the arm of my chair. "Park, hard about."

"What?"

"Hard about! Put all power on the forward shield!"

"Guess we're finding out how this girl handles a cube after all," Biri mutters as the stars spin past on the screen.

"More probes, coming in all sides! They're trying to flank us!"

"Full power to dorsal array. One focused burst, fire!" Tess hammers her board and twin energy streams whip across the array, meeting in the middle and slamming out into space. "Park, roll ship one-eighty. Tess, ventral array, hit him again."

The cube and starfield spin upside-down on the screen and I swallow against my inner ear's complaint. The ventral phaser array and torpedo tube blaze fire, smashing into their shields for an answering blue glow bigger than our entire ship. Then a sickly green cone erupts from one face of the cube. "They're trying to tractor us!" Tess shouts. "We're losing our forward shields! Enemy cutting beam firing!" A pink ray snaps out and rakes across the saucer and port nacelle. A thunderous boom conducts through the hull and hull breach alarms howl.

But we're finally close enough. "Park, ninety degree down, interpose dorsal shield, then cut engines and send everything to the phasers!"

The cube rockets upward out of the frame as we pass it at point-blank range; I snap, "All upper phasers, _fire!_ " Five searing hot particle lances blaze out from all corners of our upper hull, smashing into a single point of shields barely two centimeters across and punching through. The macro I wrote triggers automatically and four quantum torpedoes vanish from our magazine in a swirl of blue sparks, the dorsal shield dropping just long enough to let the transmission past. "Park, full impulse!"

The cube, trying to turn to follow us, is suddenly shredded in a massive internal explosion that propels chunks no bigger than a brick every which way at a decent fraction of the speed of light, taking the nearest probe with it. "YES!" Tess whoops. "YES! That's how we do it, people!"

"Don't celebrate yet, there's still half a dozen probes left!"

"Uh, Captain…" Wiggin starts, but trails off.

"What?"

"The remaining probes appear to be falling back. Repeat, the Borg are retreating."

More un-Borg-like behavior but there's no time to parse it. "Let's take the opportunity and get out of here. Park, set course for—"

"That won't be possible, Captain," he quietly tells me. "Here's the damage report." A long list of damaged systems appears on the screen, but he scrolls to the middle and highlights an item; the cheering rapidly fades. "That cutting beam took out the port nacelle. Until it's repaired…"

He doesn't need to finish.

We're stuck in the middle of nowhere.

* * *

The meatbag ship is formidable, and its commander bold. It will be a difficult prize to take, but it has suffered significant damage. Its FTL drive appears to be inoperable, or else it would have escaped.

In contrast, the ships created by the other AI appear to be underpowered for their size. Their mass makes them difficult to destroy, and this transwarp capability is quite useful. And it now appears to have adapted software countermeasures to my attacks: the ships have begun to resist efforts to suborn them to my use.

But as more and more of its ships arrive, I realize its weakness. Though the AI—the systems of my captures describe it as a "Queen"—uses auxiliaries like me, its design and tactics are clumsy and inferior. The ships are poorly armed, and it appears congenitally incapable of targeting more than one opponent at a time.

Clearly whatever AI has usurped my network is inferior. I will suborn it if possible, and destroy it if not.

I am Borg. Resistance is futile.

* * *

"Here's the casualty list, Captain," Tess says, somberly handing a PADD across the wardroom table.

I hate this part. I look over it, trying to match names to memories. One hundred eleven wounded, twenty seriously. Thirty-eight dead. Gunnery and Engineering took the worst of it, though somehow Bynam's two-in-cee, Kerensky, made it out of a nacelle Jefferies tube with just a few minor burns and a cracked rib. Lieutenant Commander Sylok, Tess's number two, wasn't so lucky: piece of shrapnel disemboweled him. Bled out in seconds, thank the Prophets.

Can't say the same for Crewman Recruit Imyre Pwon. She burned to death, trapped by a broken structural member on deck 6 when the fire suppression system failed. Her older brother was in my squad in boot camp, she was _five weeks_ out of 'A' school, Jakir made me promise him I'd look after her, more fool me. What am I going to say? That she died horribly because I provoked the Borg?

Of course, that's assuming any of us get out of this in the first place. "What's our status, Bynam? Can you get us out of here?" The other Andorian on my senior staff looks away from me. "Come on, just get us to limping, that's all I need."

He turns back to me and slowly shakes his head. "We need a shipyard, ma'am. That cutting beam took out three coolant lines and sent shrapnel through half the relays and the field controller bus. Whole thing overloaded and depolarized the verterium cortenide in what coils _didn't_ get completely destroyed by the beam itself. We don't have enough gel packs left to replace the ones that got cooked in plasma fires, either, and I lost three of my team to the coolant release."

I squeeze my eyes shut. " _Phekk._ All right, Plan B. Rescue?"

Gaarra answers, " _Onondaga_ and _Taino_ will be here in twenty-eight hours, a hunting party from Clan Inogra fifteen minutes later."

"That's _it_? Two _Dakota_ -class cruisers and a bunch of Hirogen?" Tess grumbles.

"That's the first wave; the entire Klingon Seventh Fleet's going to be here in thirty-one hours. And yes," he adds before anyone else can complain, "I'm aware that's not much help."

"Okay, worst-case scenario," I interject before an argument can start. "How many people can we evac in the shuttles and the runabout?"

In a rumbling voice, Dul'krah answers, "Perhaps one hundred fifty crew, if we modify the cargo shuttles with additional life support systems."

"Bynam, get anybody you can spare on that." He nods and jots down a note on his PADD.

"Who gets to leave?" Tess asks.

"Stable wounded, necessary medical staff, and any pregnant females first, cadets next. After that… lifeboat rules." The others nod without a word, and I feel a flash of pride poke through my worries. I just told them to trust their lives to a random number generator, and they don't say a thing. "Everyone else stays behind to draw the Borg away from the escape ships. The self-destruct will be armed: they won't take _my_ ship, or any of you."

In answer Warragul raises his half-full mug of coffee and tells me, "She's _our_ ship, Cap'n."

I mimic his gesture with my double espresso. " _Bajor_ , and being alive."

" _Bajor_ and being alive," the others echo.

"Look, there goes another one," Gaarra says, gesturing at one of the viewports. Tess and I get up and join him.

"Tactical cube, judging by the size of that transwarp gate," Tess observes. Beams of plasma and bolts of light glitter among the constant dots of stars thousands of kilometers away.

I reach quietly to my left and touch Gaarra's hand, and he takes it, giving me a reassuring squeeze. I squeeze back, harder, a game we play sometimes that I always lose: even fourteen years of PT can't compete with him being a man and a heavyworlder. Sure enough, he squeezes harder than I can and I relax, leaning my head onto his shoulder. "Weird, isn't it," I comment. "Borg fighting a civil war."

"One of One must be hacking them, taking control," Tess says, carefully not looking at us.

I give her a look. "Are you still uncomfortable with—"

"Look, Captain," she bites out, "any minute those boltheads could decide to stop frakking each other and come back here to grab us, and I'd rather you two weren't necking when it happened."

In answer, Gaarra just puts his arm around me. "You grab your moments when you can, sir. This one goes by, there may not be another. More likely than I think any of us in this job care to admit."

Tess makes an annoyed noise. I chuckle and whisper to Gaarra, "She's just irritated 'cause that _thaan_ at DJC turned her down."

Tess's head whips around. "You heard about that?"

I laugh. "Turnabout is fair play, Number One." Then something in the Borg fight catches my eye. I grab my PADD off the desk and link it to the sensor outputs with a few finger-swipes. " _Phekk_." I drop the PADD and don't even hear the screen shatter on the ground as I dislodge myself from Gaarra and run for the door to the bridge. "This is the captain! All hands return to battle stations!"

"Captain on deck!" Wiggin shouts.

"As you were!" I shout back as I make it to the center chair. Behind me I hear the turbolift cycle open as Bynam heads back to Engineering.

"Three spheres, seven probes, and a tac cube headed our way, fast!"

Damn it. "Get the evacuation started, nonessential crew and wounded first. We'll have to hold them off as long as we can. Park, try and keep your distance unless I say so. Attack pattern Shran Six, go."

The second fight goes much as the first: Badly. I bark orders as fast as I can think them up, and two more probes and a sphere die under our guns.

But there's too many of them and not enough of us. Even a ship that's practically a starbase has limits, and we're short on food and sleep.

"We're losing the deflector shield!" Tess cries out. Another cutting beam rakes across the ship's neck, while yet another strikes the saucer just forward of the bridge.

Then Wiggin yells, "Underspace rupture off the starboard bow!"

Underspace. Can't be the Turei, they're on completely the other side of the sector block. Which means…

A golden portal swirls out of the blackness and a wing of dull brown specks emerges. I barely have time to recognize them as Vaad warships and scream a warning before they open fire.

On the Borg.

A cascade of polaron bolts from the spinal guns of three _Astika_ -class artillery ships leads the way, catching the portside probes in the flank and tearing merrily through shields optimized for our phasers. Cluster munitions send clouds of microtorpedoes into the breach with surgical precision and both ships blow apart. Tess adds her fire and the last probe on that vector dies in an actinic flash as its main reactor goes.

"Captain, the Vaads are hailing us!" Esplin calls.

"Onscreen!"

Commander Darva appears in an inset as the stars whirl with Park's maneuvers and an incoming sphere swivels into view. "Compliments of the Supreme Overseer, Captain Kanril. We detected your distress signal and are here to render aid."

Prophets' tears. I hit the microphone key on my armrest. "Thanks for coming, Commander! Our warp drive's out; we're gonna need a tow."

An offscreen voice I don't recognize concurs. "Sending help now. Squadron Gath, Squadron Arkeb, establish the perimeter!"

A wing of cruisers and assault ships flash past us, spraying cannonfire and dropping constriction anchors at the Borg. Two more probes die in seconds, the sphere is ensnared in a whirling dervish of force and set upon by Tess and two cruisers, and One of One falls back. "All units," I send, "concentrate fire on the tac cube!"

"Locked! Firing!"

Tess and the artillery ships press the attack as the escorts play missile defense and keep the probes busy. Orange spears and pale blue bolts hammer into the cube's armored flanks, sublimating armor plate and structural members. Tess empties the forward torpedo tube into the breach and an answering explosion, bigger than any three of our ships put together, belches out of the interior. Cracks rip across the outer hull faster than the eye can follow, ripping the armor asunder.

"Target is still active!" Wiggin calls. The horribly wounded cube fires back, plasma torpedoes blazing at the swarm of attack ships still plinking away at its flanks. Three are hit and vaporized as probes close in.

A signal comes in from Darva's _Revenge_. "Overseer Harn to _Bajor_ and Squadron Gath! We need cover!"

"Conn!"

"On it!" Park comes hard about and Tess hits the cube with another broadside as we withdraw to attack the Borg. Seems a half-dozen probes and a sphere bypassed the Vaad artillery ships' defense screen and forward batteries to hit their vulnerable flanks.

On one level, the soldier in me is impressed with One of One's military acumen. But how the _phekk_ do you fight something that can jump anywhere it wants?

"Overseer Harn, was it? This is Captain Kanril! We need to bug out!"

"Pardon?"

"Retreat!"

"I agree, but we can't open a gate to underspace with the Borg hitting us like this—"

Wiggin interrupts, "Captain, additional transwarp signatures! More Borg, one of their big ones!"

A cigar-shaped unimatrix command vessel, a hexagonal tube the size of a small moon, phases into existence, flanked by a pair of tactical cubes. The comms fill with a signal, a chorus of thousands of voices in a reverberating bass: " _We are the Borg. Surrender your vessel. You will escort us to your homeworld, where we will begin assimilating your culture and technology. Resistance is futile._ "

The wounded tactical cube and One of One's other ships break off their attack, turning to face this new threat as a plasma lance as wide as my ship erupts from one end of the unimatrix, skewering one of the rogue spheres; two _Manasa_ -class assault ships are caught in the explosion and sent tumbling. "Overseer Harn," one of them, a female voice, radios, "go now!"

"I will leave no soldier behind, Commander Farla!"

"Our underspace engines are damaged; we cannot withdraw! Honor our names!" They turn towards the unimatrix and their afterburners come alight.

 _No._ No one else dies today, not if I can help it. I grab the comm. "Negative! Negative! This is Captain Kanril Eleya! Drop your rear shields! We'll beam you off!" I put my palm over the mike. "Tell me you can do it, Gaarra."

He reaches for his own intercom. "Petty Officer Anusu, I need you to beam around 300 people directly to Cargo Bay One. Can you do it?"

"Yes, sir!" a female voice confirms over the comm.

"Then we entrust our lives to you, Starfleet! Engaging autopilot; transport us now!"

"Transport commencing," Gaarra reports. "Transport complete."

"Harn, we've got them!" I radio. "Tractor us and let's get out of here!"

"I wholeheartedly agree!" Blue-glowing streams of force snap out from two of the artillery ships as they come about. Park's hands race across his console to configure the ship for transit as another golden portal swirls into existence.

* * *

"Jesus Christ, Kanril!" Admiral Reynolds yells at me in an exasperated tone. I make a studious effort at pretending to study the painting hanging behind her office chair. "I send you to do _one thing_ , and you start a goddamn war!"

"Sir, I—"

"Shut up."

"Yes, sir."

"And you have no idea if this 'One of One' escaped?"

"No, sir."

"Perfect."

I lower my head so I can make eye contact. "Respectfully, sir, I _did_ actually achieve my original mission objective."

She closes her eyes tiredly, sighs, and nods. "You did, at that. Overseer Eldex says he's interested in getting a formal armistice in place, at least, so we're kicking this upstairs to the Diplomatic Corps. I'm told Ambassador zh'Thane is going to appoint a special envoy to meet with the Vaadwaur foreign minister."

"Not me, I hope."

Reynolds sputters and bursts out laughing. "No, no! No, uh, it'll be somebody from the Exterior Department, maybe Bill Ross. No, uh, you're going home. Engineers say they'll have to replace your entire port nacelle, and we don't have the facilities to do that kind of work on a battleship _Bajor_ 's size."

"Thank you, sir." Some shore leave sounds good, though I have to deal with my dead first: I'm up to fifty crew members.

She shakes her head and hands me a PADD. "Don't thank me just yet. If this intel digest is accurate, well… frying pan, fire."

I give it a quick once-over. Seems like the usual stuff: another power struggle in the Klingon High Council, Talarian election news, the Romulan Republic Senate formally ratified the Khitomer Peace Treaty with the Star Empire, and… Son of a wraith… " _Another_ Dyson sphere?"

"That's right. We're expecting a full-scale invasion of home space within weeks."

I hand her back the PADD and clasp my hands. "Understood, sir. We'll ship out ASAP."

"Very good, Captain Kanril. Dismissed." I turn smartly on my heel and head for the door. "Oh, and Kanril?" she adds as I reach the knob.

"Sir?"

"Well done."

 **THE END**


End file.
